Point Blank: The Club

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A candid talk with Bizarre Creations about its newest game, The Club. New details and first in-game screenshots.

By Douglass C. Perry

Bizarre Creations continues to ascend up the short list of hot developers because of its consistent string of excellent games. The original Geometry Wars transformed into the now timeless classic, Geometry Wars Evolved, one of the best Xbox Live Arcade games on the planet. Project Gotham Racing 3 released with the Xbox 360 system in November 2005, hooking gamers with its mix of realism, great car handling, and addictive online play. Project Gotham Racing 4 will follow it up this fall, and now, working with SEGA, Bizarre is prepped to release The Club, a third-person shooter based on skill, timing and fun.

The Club looks to grab gamers with a fast-paced arcade approach to shooters. Designed from a third-person perspective and using quick mechanics and fluid gameplay design, Bizarre hopes to reel gamers in with the Club's broad appeal and then keep them coming back with its addictive pace, progression scheme and perhaps a few beers after a night at the pub. The Club debuted at E3 2006 behind closed doors at a very early stage. This interview was actually push back a few weeks because Bizarre wanted to show off the latest look at the game with fresh screenshots.

We spoke with Bizarre Creations' Nick Davies, design manager, and Matt Cavanagh, lead designer, about The Club to get a better feel and look at the shooter.

Visually, The Club looks light years ahead of its E3 debut.

IGN: What are the origins of the game, The Club? What games inspired it and at what point did you, the designers, say, "Hey, I really want to play this kind of third-person shooter?"

Nick Davies: The Club came about from an original idea about making a game that was essentially about measuring your skill with a gun, and we first started playing around with the idea of shooting targets, learning patterns and constantly improving your skills through practice.

Fun though it was, shooting paper targets wasn't the most commercial of ideas, but it did let us experiment with the idea of having a fast-paced game that rewarded players with skill, and it felt very much like a sport. So over time that whole competitive concept developed into what is now The Club. It was very much a gameplay-led development, the setting and the story evolved afterwards.

Act quickly, make smart moves, or die.

IGN: The Club sounds like an interesting idea: Players sprint through a level in a timed fashion shooting down enemies for multipliers, high scores, and opening up new levels. It seems, however that the game is dependent, to a certain extent, on knowing the maps well. Once you know the maps well, is there less skill required? Are they linear levels? Or do the maps offer different paths through them?

Nick Davies: The game isn't just dependent on knowing the maps well. That's akin to saying once you know a racing track well then it's somehow less skillful to get around it in a good time.